What I'm Reading: Intro

I'm reading a book with a different cultural perspective on parenting, and I love it. (Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman) Pamela, a journalist in NY, fell in love and married a swarthy British man who lived in Paris. She moved to Paris, they had a daughter, and she realized that young children in Paris, and other parts of France were not having tantrums, and could sit quietly at a restaurant and eat with adults. She found this quite different from what she had seen in NY and writes this book with the answers to her questions. 


(I get really excited about what I'm learning, and that is why I share it with you.)


She writes:


"For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother tells me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time."


"Within a few hours of meeting him, I realized that "love at first sight" just means feeling immediately and extremely calm with someone. (She shares her love story. There is much more to the book than dry parenting advice.)


"By the end of our ruined beach holiday, I've decided to figure out what French parents are doing differently. Why don't French children throw food? And why aren't their parents shouting? What is the invisible, civilizing force that the French have harnessed?"


"...there's something about the way the French parents make it less of a grind and more of a pleasure."


I've read into the first several chapters, and what she has discovered appears to be common sense to the French parent, but in the U.S. we have so many perspectives and parenting-styles that we don't follow the same basic unspoken rules. I'm excited to share these simple concepts and hopefully put them into practice with my children. Stay tuned for simple and straight forward thoughts on sleeping, eating, the art of waiting, and her findings on Parisians very different (from women in the US) take on pregnancy!


(All italicized text from the book Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, photo)